The Fulham Wine Rooms

About The Fulham Wine Rooms

SquareMeal Review

Bronze Award

Treading the same oenophile path as its Kensington sibling, this handsome venue puts down a serious marker with 48 selections offered by the glass – thanks to an Enomatic system. If drinking's on your mind, head to the bar, bag a stool, purchase a 'wine card' and get stuck into the line-up of global vintages – with perhaps a few tapas plates on the side. Alternatively, the brick-clad dining room provides a relaxed setting for some rather sophisticated cooking, with suggested wine matches alongside each item on the evening menu: a glass of Sicilian Arianna Occhipinti Bianco with crab cakes and smoked chilli jelly; a 1er cru Chablis Domaine Billaud-Simon with sea bream, pak choy, oyster mushrooms and saffron sauce; a Luddite Shiraz 2008 (from the Cape) to complement ibérico pork presa and romesco sauce. Brunch is a good shout at the weekend, and regular wine events are a big draw.

Reviews of The Fulham Wine Rooms

The Fulham Wine Rooms reminds me of a hugely sophisticated version of an Italian enoteca. I have many happy memories (albeit mostly fuzzy) of my nearest one in Italy: a tiny wine shop piled high to the ceiling with crates of whatever happened to be in that week, where locals were encouraged to buy snifters of different wine before choosing a bottle or two to take home for dinner. Snifters often became glasses which became bottles. This English version is slightly more restrained and refined but suits a London vibe perfectly. Lighting is relatively dim, decor is woodily subdued, and there are abundant barside stools from which to admire the wall of industrial looking wine fridges which dispense in 3 sizes (gulps, guzzles and government-wrath-inducing goblets?). We tried a variety of sparkling wines/champagnes so I will back another time to unleash my kid-in-a-candyshop side on those chillers. The Spanish tapas complements the idea of tasters of wine well although didn't completely blow me away. We had a plate of Iberian hams sliced off the leg behind the bar, slightly cool prawns with tasty chorizo, and mushrooms on toast (a bit oily but deliciously wild tasting with not a whiff of mass produced button 'shrooms about it). Service was polite and helpful. At £33 each (shared food plus 3 glasses) it is pricier than that enoteca of old but all in all a drinking venue worthy of West London. Can we have one in Battersea please?